Historian takes romantic view of American bohemians
By: Cynthia Cannon
At the turn of the 20th century, Margaret Sanger fulfilled her objective to make her mark in what was deemed a “free-speech” society. In lower Manhattan, she disseminated information about birth control, making certain that contraceptives were made available to all women.
Starting her own birth control journal, the “Woman Rebel,” Ms. Sanger was indicted in 1914 for sending “obscene material” through the mail. Rather than prepare for trial, Ms. Sanger went to work at composing a manual of contraceptive use called “Family Limitation.”
Enlisting the help of an anarchist printer, Ms. Sanger helped reprint 100,000 copies of the manual. She bundled them for distribution through labor networks and then rushed to Europe to avoid prosecution.
While Ms. Sanger was in Europe, Emma Goldman — editor and publisher of “Mother Earth,” an anarchist monthly journal — took over Ms. Sanger’s role in promoting birth control. Serving as a midwife in the lower east side of Manhattan, she was familiar with the negative outcome of unplanned pregnancy. A participant in a clandestine conference of birth control radicals in Paris in 1900, Ms. Goldman brought that knowledge back to the United States, educating the public through lectures she offered on love and marriage.
Ms. Sanger and Ms. Goldman were eminent figures in “the emergence of a force field of emancipated womanhood,” in New York City’s Greenwich Village in the early 1900s, says historian Christine Stansell.
Both women were among the New York moderns — visionaries and individualists who set out to change the modern world, Ms. Stansell related in her Princeton home.
For more than a decade, Ms. Stansell, a professor of history at Princeton University and lifelong admirer of Emma Goldman, has devoted herself to the study of the moderns, also known as the bohemians, whom she says were advocates of “free speech, free love and politically-engaged art.” They swept away “late Victorian sexual prudery, the cult of domesticity, stodgy bourgeois art and political conservatism.”
After reading previously published histories on the beginnings of bohemia, Ms. Stansell believed that these texts “barely skimmed the surface,” failing to explain complexities of the influential period in history.
She felt it was time to explore the legendary period as a “life lived in color.” To this end, the professor has recently published her third book, “American Moderns, Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century” (Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Co., $30).
“American Moderns” explores New York City and bohemians from 1890 through 1920. The moderns “transformed an exceptionally shabby neighborhood into a place glowing with a sense of the contemporary…young women throw morality to the winds (along with their Victorian corsets) in ardent love affairs, golden young men plot peaceful revolution, poets and playwrights conceive their creations in scintillating talk in late-night cafés,” writes Ms. Stansell.
“The bohemians were self-dramatizers and self-aggrandizers, adept at creating themselves as a cast of fascinating characters: not only exuberant artists but plucky New Women, idealistic New Men, brilliant immigrant Jews, smoldering revolutionaries and farsighted workers, all vaunting their renovations of artistic endeavor, politics and sociability,” she continues.
Ms. Stansell recalls thinking about the moderns in the late 1970s while she was living in an upscale area of Greenwich Village. The city was tawdry and menacing at that time, she said. People were leaving the city to settle in suburbs.
At the time, she read a book by journalist John Reed. Mr. Reed wrote short stories about an “extraordinary” New York between the period of 1910 and 1918. A staff writer for the radical periodical “The Masses,” he explored communication between the people in the city — homeless men on park benches, prostitutes and drifters all had something exciting to contribute to the modern society.
“Mr. Reed wrote about a city where unusual things happened,” she said. “You can fall in love with an anonymous woman or man, and the city was so generous.”
Ms. Stansell was attracted to the modern period, as its radiance was juxtaposed with the “grimy, downbeat 70s world” she was living in.
Several years later, Ms. Stansell began research for “American Moderns.” She read archival papers from nearly every library in New York City.
She also read intimate correspondence between such moderns as Mabel Dodge, an heiress from Buffalo whose weekly salons brought together socialists, suffragists, poets, lawyers and psychoanalysts; Louise Bryant, a writer committed to sexual freedom and modern ideas; Hutchins Hapgood, Harvard University graduate, writer and champion of free love; and Margaret Anderson, an editor involved in radical politics and open about a lesbian relationship with Jane Heap.
The bohemia in which these characters stumbled into, according to Ms. Stansell’s text, was inspired by prototypes from Europe. Walt Whitman frequented Pfaff’s, a basement saloon in the 1850s. Later, saloons, cafes and men’s clubs became the “popular hangouts” for intellectuals, musicians and artists.
Bohemians sought to escape a society that was caught in bourgeois resolve. They gathered together to “improvise, fantasize and dramatize,” until “gentlemen were at odds with their class, women at odds with their roles and immigrants sought conversation outside of the ghetto.”
In “American Moderns,” Ms. Stansell captures the essence of feminism, literary sensibilities, immigrant Jews, sexual politics and the liberalism of the early 20th century in New York City and throughout the United States and Europe.
No other period in history can be compared to modern times, emphasized Ms. Stansell, although some parallels can be drawn between the 1910s and the 1960s. Both historical periods adopted sexual freedom and the search to weave art with everyday living. Literary cliques during modern times were reminiscent of the beat writers of the 60s, including Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
The 60s society also borrowed clothing styles from the bohemians. Billowy, sheer and loose, comfortable styles were prominent.
The moderns believed they would have a lasting impact on future generations. The greatest legacy the moderns left to the 21st century is a powerful women’s rights movement.
Moreover, bohemia no longer exists in this century, according to Ms. Stansell, because of materialism. Bohemia needs much space for the imagination and Americans are too busy making money to be imaginative, she continued. American moderns were too busy with what they viewed as creative work to spend time making money.
“There might be small pockets today of what seems like a little bit of bohemia — on campus and in the Princeton community,” she continued.
After publishing the book, Ms. Stansell took a trip to New York City, visiting the same sights, treading the same ground where the moderns once exchanged ideas. She was disheartened, she admitted, to see Walt Whitman’s once popular hangout, Pfaff’s, turned into a posh restaurant, while Emma Goldman’s favorite haunt was demolished for a public housing project.
“I tried to imagine the influx of vibrant voices of the past among the bricks and mortar,” the historian mused.
“American Moderns, Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century” is available at Micawbers Books in Princeton, among other local bookstores.